The present invention relates generally to networking architectures.
The scheduling of conference calls enables multiple parties to converse and share information from widely disparate locations. At a scheduled time for a conference call, each invited party accesses a conference bridge, and joins the conference call.
When a conference call is to be scheduled to include a relatively large number of required or desired participants, the scheduling process may be tedious. Identifying a time slot during which substantially all of the participants are available may be time consuming. By way of example, a party who is responsible for scheduling a conference call that is to be joined by many participants may need to initiate e-mail exchanges with each participant in an effort to locate a common, available time slot during which the conference call may be scheduled. The use of e-mail exchanges, which may drag on for days, wastes valuable time, and may prove to be a drain on the productivity of involved parties, i.e., those participating in the e-mail exchanges.
Personal information manager tools, e.g., Microsoft Outlook, may provide calendaring functionality that facilitates the scheduling of conference calls. A user of calendaring functionality may maintain his or her schedule on a calendar that may be accessed by others across a network. By accessing the calendars of intended participants, a conference call scheduler may attempt to locate a common time during which each of the participants is available. However, some of the intended participants may not keep their calendars up-to-date. For example, a calendar may erroneously indicate than an intended participant is available when he or she is not actually available. If a conference call is scheduled during a time when the intended participant is not actually available, he or she may be forced to contact the conference call scheduler and request that the conference call be scheduled for a different time. As a result, the conference call scheduler may be forced to repeat the overall, inefficient, tedious process of identifying a common time that is available for all intended participants.